Commenter Profile

Helena Cobban is the owner of Just World Books. She’s been blogging since 2003 at JustWorldNews.org. Her 1984 book The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power, and Politics, was published by Cambridge University Press and is still in print. Her early-1990 study “The PLO and the Intifada” was published in The Middle East Journal (Spring 1990).

Jonathan Kuttab is a veteran human rights lawyer of great standing in the Palestinian community, and a wonderful, inspiring person. His spouse Beth Kuttab, ditto (but a humanitarian-affairs leader, not a lawyer.) Kudos to this temple for inviting Jonathan to come and share/explore his thinking with the community.

It is definitely worth noting in any such discussion the deep roots of the one-state ideal in Jewish/yishuv society in pre-Israel Palestine. I hope that Judah Magnes and Martin Buber and their legacy were integral to the discussion?

This is a good report on an important topic. Worth remembering the key role that the sports boycott of South Africa played in "persuading" many reluctant "White" South Africans that they'd need to support the peace talks with the ANC if they wanted to continue playing their beloved Rugby football on the world scene... (Do not, of course, confuse the hard-nosed, principled way the ANC negotiated with the bootlicking, kowtowing way the current PA heads "negotiate".)

Just one caveat. The West Bank is not just " territory that is being disputed by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA)" as stated here. It is territory that is rightfully claimed by the Palestinians but is currently held under Israeli military occupation. The adjective "disputed" is a weasel-word that many pro-Israelis use to describe these territories when they don't want to say the OPT's are OCCUPIED.

This: "Ahmed Majdalani, an adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli media the new arrangements assumed Palestinans were 'stupid and lacking self-respect' and could be 'bought with economic perks'.... " Um, has he looked at the long record of his boss recently?

Him speaking of "how he was stationed in a watchtower in the no man’s land of the Golan Heights and came to an epiphany while watching refugee children playing and laughing about the tendency to dehumanize the Other... " doesn't make sense.

There are no Palestinian refugees anywhere in or near the occupied Golan. If he was in the no-man's-land area, that means he was in a forward observation position looking deep into Syria... No Palestinian refugee camps (such as would house "refugee children") anywhere near. It is *possible* he might have watched some children from Syrian families displaced from Golan by the war of 1967, though by and large they didn't stay close to the occupied area but were dispersed far and wide throughout Syria. But they wouldn't have been refugees-- they were internally displaced from one part of their own country (Golan, which is part of Syria) to another.

Also, what's with this desire/tendency to infantilize the "Other"?

Finally, how disturbing is it that someone who runs a networking resource as crucial to the US do-gooding movement as Idealist is apparently of a strongly Zionist enough persuasion that he performs in this conference? Is everyone who uses Idealist to post jobs, find jobs, or do other networking things in the do-gooding world happy that their whole databases may be shared with various Zionist organizations? Just asking.

I strongly challenge your decision to claim in the headline that the Palestinian woman *did* throw a knife. You present (and I have seen) no independent corroboration of that claim made by the Israeli police spox.

Annie, thanks so *much* for this great piece of research and analysis. I hadn't seen the video. At 0:22 it stopped me in my tracks: "When Bashar Al-Asad actually *used* chemical weapons, he [Obama] realized that... " So Jeffrey Goldberg, former Israeli prison guard, is now definitively telling us what no intel organization in the world has been able to, that he *knows who it was* who used those chemical weapons in August 2013. Gimme a break. Even in his written article, he reports (quite accurately) that the US intelligence community was saying that the claims that it had been Pres. Asad who used the weapons were "no slam dunk". But now, in the video, Cpl. Goldberg tells us he knows. Why does anyone give this cheap pro-war propagandist any credibility? (A question that I would extend to Pres. Obama, as well... )

Ah, they all look so smug and happy standing in their too-preppy-for-words outfits in front of the repeated "Bank of America" logos. Is the Public Theater an institution that once had a social change agenda?

Phil, this was all great till you got to: "Terry Gross needs to interview these guys on NPR." come on, Phil, surely you know what a super-ardent Zionist gatekeeper Ms Gross is! Hell will freeze over beford she lets onto her show anyone who challenges the AIPAC orthodoxy.

Also, by saying, "Terry Gross needs to interview these guys on NPR" you invest her with way too my authority/credibility. To heck with the small-minded, provincially bounded Terry Gross. There are plenty of other people in the MSM more significant than her. It is *they* who should be, and may well be about to be, interviewing these guys. Don't give TG any more credit or credibility than the very small amount she deserves.

It is highly relevant to note that NPR nationally-- and also many of its affiliate stations in crucial media markets-- has been subjected for many years to intensive, Zionist discourse-policing by the brownshirts of organizations like the Orwellianly-misnamed, Boston-based CAMERA (Committee for "Accuracy" in Middle East Reporting in America.) Back in the aughts, Camera and its allies organized numerous "donor boycotts" of NPR affiliate stations that it wanted to discipline for NPR being, to their mind, too "even-handed" re the Palestine Question... and those boycotts were stunningly effective, leaving NPR-central essentially emasculated re doing any serious, hard-hitting, objective coverage of Palestinian-Israeli issues.

CAMERA and its allies realized that the vulnerable underbelly of NPR was the reliance of so many of its affiliate radio stations on (mainly local) fundraising. And given the prevalance of PEP (Progressive "Except for" Palestine) donors among the general donating-to-NPR crowd, they were stunningly successful.

Now, however, it strikes me that PEP is an anachronism; and we need to think of organizing a bit of PIP (Progressive Including on Palestine) pressure on NPR affiliates. That is, all those people who regularly donate time or money to their local NPR station should consider explicitly raising the issue of the nature of NPR-national's sadly lacking-in-objectivity coverage of Palestine/Israel with the stations when donation time comes around. Of course, it is not the individual, $50 donors who are really effective in swaying the stations (and thereby, NPR-national), but rather the much larger donors, megadollar "Family Foundations", and such. So our campaign should be very broad, and seek to include as many people as possible from such larger donating entities.

Who says boycott campaigns-- or even threat-of-boycott campaigns-- don't work? Not CAMERA, that's for sure.

It is *not* available at that "nwiddepok" site, which is a phishing platform used to hoodwink people to gain your credit-card and other personal details. Buyer beware! It *is* available via this page on the Just World Books website-- with free shipping for orders placed before the October 5 publication date.

There is a long and distinguished history of non-Zionism and anti-Zionism in the American Jewish community that needs to be resurrected and highlighted. For example, most supporters of the Jewish Bund (socialist labor organization) in the US were non- or anti-Zionist. There was Nahum Goldman. There was the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which well into the 1970s had almost physical tussles with the Zionist emissaries at the Vienna train station at which Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union would arrive. (Hias wanted the arrivals to be given free choice of where they would head, and offered aid if they should choose to come to the US. The Zionists absolutely did not want free choice, but wanted to corral them all onto the next plane for Tel Aviv.)

It wasn't till quite a time after 1967 that the pro-Zionists started to dominate all the US Jewish organizations, federations, etc. Their campaign of constant conflation of Judaism and Zionism has become stronger and stronger in recent years. Thank G-d that a combination of JVP's stellar organizing and Netanyahu's arrrogant over-reach has now forced a major crack in that conflation!

Setting this up as some kind of trade/moral equivalence between US arms exports and Chinese arms exports, as both Lowenstein and your headline writer do, is highly problematic. The major international database on international arms transfers is run by the Swedish organization SIPRI. Their most recent report on the matter (through the end of 2014) is here (PDF). In it, you can learn that in the 5-year period 2010-2014, the US originated 31% of global arms transfers-- and China, a "whopping" 5%.

I'm sure if you dig deeper into the SIPRI database than I have time to here, you could find the figures for arms transfers to Africa and the ME.

But get real, people! This is not any kind of an "equivalent" situation-- and even further from being an "arms race" as the headline writer described it. It is more like an arms-selling free-for-all in which each big (government-backed) US company is trying to outsell both its US and its non-US competitors; and I imagine it's the same on the Chinese side, though they have nothing like the market share that the US has. (Lowenstein might also have noted that Russia far outflanks China in this arms-selling business, with 27% of the market share, worldwide.) In several cases, China and the US were probably supplying the same side in a conflict-- and I certainly know that in several conflicts, e.g. in Iraq, megalethal US arms have been exported to both sides.

So enough with the talk of a "US-China arms race". It may fit handily into the "fear of rising China" theme that arises frequently in the US MSM, but we shouldn't have to deal with it here on Mondo... Since the vast majority of Mondo readers are US citizens, surely our major task is to rein in the bellophilic and arms-addicted behavior of our own government, and urge non-military approaches to international problems wherever and whenever we can-- rather than play into fears of some almost wholly imagined international "arms race"?

I agree with WH. While I am 100% confident that Max's book is excellent, to have one white guy whom I really like (Asa) describe the book of another ditto (Max), and then have that picked up by a third ditto (Phil) does kind of ignore the excellent literary production on the war, in English, of actual Gaza Palestinians. Mohammed Omer's Shellshocked is indeed amazing. As is Atef Abu Saif's The Drone Eats with Me. And to present a more multi-dimensional and female-including collection of writings that foregrounds the voices of Gaza Palestinians, my company published Gaza Unsilenced, co-edited by Gaza Palestinians Laila El-Haddad and Refaat Alareer. So while, yes, it is notable that Max's book hasn't gotten any MSM reviews, I think the lack of MSM attention given to these other three books is equally notable and-- in the context of the long history of the marginalizing and silencing of Palestinian voices here in the USA-- even more egregious. (Shellshocked did get one well-deserved mention in, I think, the NYRB.) I wish that Phil would extend his campaign to these other books, too!

Actually, since 1948, "Jordan" (a creation of the British) has functioned very effectively as Israel's main Bantustan-- that is, a repository for the people Israel has expelled and doesn't want, in which they are given the semblance of "civic and political rights" but always under the control of the master-state. (With the identity of the main master-state in question shifting over time from Britain to the US to Israel.) And amazingly, unlike Apartheid South Africa's Bantustans, "Jordan" has been accepted as a so-called independent state all along-- though everyone understands that really it is just a modern-day form of a satrapy (i.e., a highly dependent political entity.)

I'm not sure that Ms. Sullivan writing "as a mother"-- or James and Phil also claiming to write "as a mother"-- is actually helpful. First, it essentializes the role of a mother ("embodiment of empathy!") Second, it's sexist. Third, it essentializes the role of a parent. How about just "as a human being"? A person doesn't have to be a parent of either gender to be fully human.

It's okay, Phil and James, you don't have to do the full Caitlyn and bear children too, in order to prove that you're capable of human empathy.

Having quite a few, totally non-hating Jewish people in my family, I've wondered about how some of this fear/hate gets perpetuated. I do notice that a lot of Jewish communal/religious observances are based on celebrating the "escape" of earlier Jewish communities from the heavy hand of oppression at the hands of neighboring communities who are very easily conflated with Israel's current neighbors. E.g., the whole Exodus story about escape from enslavement by "Egypt", or the Hannukkah story which is told as a story of surviving oppression by "Syria". But where are the stories of celebrating relations with non-Jewish neighbors? I'm sure there must be some... (One is almost tempted to ask, "Why do 'they' teach their children to hate?")

I think it's great that Huffpo published Paul and Trita's important piece. The only issue I had with what they wrote is the uncritical way they used the term "preventive war". Basically, a "preventive war", as opposed to a "preemptive war" is one that is quite optional for the state that wages it and the best casus belli the war initiator can come up with is that the war is to "prevent" some fairly distant and unquantified threat. It is thus very different from a pre-emptive war, which "pre-empts" a very clear and imminent danger and for that reason is sometimes allowable in the classic understandings of the laws of war. A "preventive war" is very different. I know that Paul and Trita know this, but I'm not sure how many readers of Huffpo necessarily do. Someone reading the term who's not familiar with it may understand it to refer to a war that *actually* prevents something bad.

Also, fwiw, the whole Dahiyeh Doctrine (using total destruction as a crushing means of collective punishment intended to force total submission) was *invented* by current Defense Minister Ya'alon against Lebanon in 2006.

Oh for goodness' sake Phil, since when did linking to the boudoir picture that this kookie French "intellectuelle" posted do anything to denote a "sense of style" or indeed have any relevance to anything... It's a real pity that so many French women all feel they need to present themselves in public as looking like Catherine Deneuve. I don't think you, as a male, should encourage them.

There is clearly an important *book* to be written about the relationship between African-American struggles/movement and the Palestinian ditto. Back in the late 1970s, when I was in Beirut covering the PLO there (among other things), they were super-energized to have visits from Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Joseph Lowery of the SCLC... But then, clearly, something got lost. Why?

In part, I think, it was because the PLO leadership as such became pumped with the idea of dealing with those in *power* inside the US, thinking they could move and jive with the best (or worst) of them as equals, and therefore, with their simplistic-- and as it happens completely erroneous-- way of thinking came, in effect, to disdain those still struggling for equality and rights within the US system. (There was also Arafat's terrible Nahnu la al-hunud al-humr-- "We are not Red Indians!-- statement of disdain for Native Americans... ) But also, the various Zionist organizations in the USA redoubled their efforts to try to regain/retain an alliance with African-American leaders-- and in far too many cases, they succeeded...

(1) It is absolutely *not* only Palestinians who are part of the movement. Working with Melanie on the cover design, it was my impression that the guy front right is intended to "look like" a younger punkish guy of unspecified ethnicity and the unveiled woman could be Hispanic or Italian-American or Palestinian or anything. When, as I hope, you buy and read the book you'll find that many of the students featured in it are Palestinian-Americans and many others are not.

(2) I'm amazed that you don't know any Palestinians who "look like that". There are plenty of dark- or darkish-complected Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine! Actually, I'm kind of sorry for you if you've never met any of them...

Blaine Coleman, your amazing set of claims re there *not existing* in the U.S. a student movement for justice in Palestine-- what crass and silly hasbara. Your "research" method of looking in Google news for those terms-- in early January, during winter break at every single U.S. college, was completely laughable... Do you even expect anyone who reads such silly comments to take you or your "conclusions" seriously?

In this case, the role of liberal Zionists is thrown into sharp relief. This is kind of a perennial political version of what many Israelis have liked to describe as "shooting and crying".

In the military field, this is shorthand for Israelis saying something like, "We have been forced to fight against our Arab neighbors (and by the way, has anyone noticed that we're really very good at it?) But don't imagine for a moment that we enjoy doing it. Indeed, we are so terribly sensitive that even as we shoot, we are crying." (Of course, a natural extension of this was Golda Meir's dreadful dictum-- or was it Peres?-- that "What we really resent the Arabs for is not so much that they kill us but that they force us to kill them." Excuse me while I barf here... )

The political version of "shooting while crying" is exactly what the liberal Zionists engage in-- but, instead of shooting, what they're talking about is cementing the ethnic-cleansing, colonialist expropriations the Zionists took in 1948 (along with a good few of those they took in 1967, especially in E. Jerusalem.) And the "crying" is all their handwringing over how "undemocratic" certain current actions of the Israeli government make the whole Israeli-Zionist project look.

So they are busy doing all this "crying" in an attempt precisely to preserve all those earlier colonial takings. And indeed, until now, all their public handwringings over the "state of Israel's soul", etc, have helped preserve the idea in the West that Israel is indeed, at root, a very ethical place in which all these oh-so-sensitive people can thrive, flourish, express themselves, and make a huge contribution to Western and global culture... Yes, Amos Oz, David Grossman, etc, I am looking at you.

At some level though, if these people have an ounce of empathy or morals, they must surely see that they are either the useful idiots of their hardline Zionist compatriots or, actually, their witting colluders. Of course, that would require that they can start to see the whole edifice of Jewish privilege in Israel, their role in it, and the huge degree to which they have benefitted from it. (So I'm not holding my breath.)

But really, for the rest of us, I think we should understand the role that the "cryers" on these issues have played-- for many decades now-- precisely in enabling the continuing project of the "shooters" (colonizers.) Frankly, regarding any of these public handwringers, Bernard Avishai and such, I don't really care how woefully, or how artfully, they wring their hands. What is more important is that they be called on to start using their privilege to uphold and start recovering the humanity, the dignity, and above all the rights of the long-dispossessed/oppressed.

You have to admit the video is very weird. It's a huge gathering of members of the Jewish AEP fraternity from around the US and Canada. Gathered in some lovely, up-market hotel...

The kids are identified in the video only by their first names, as though it's an AA meeting or something. Or, in some kind of suggestive way (to go along with the deliberately scaremongering demo scenes in the intercuts) to suggest that these nice fraternity brothers might be scared of fully identifying themselves in public... But if the latter, shouldn't they have done some face- and voice-masking? Certainly, anyone who's in their home colleges could easily recognize their faces.

So it might be better to think of this as *potentially* an AA-type gathering for recovering Zionists?

"If he had his way, what would he do in Gaza?" ~ and in his answer he says not one word about ending the occupation, ending Israel's iron fist of control over Gaza, winning the self-determination of Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere... Nothing!

As though any of those things he does mention, like the economy, etc, could "somehow" be fixed without ending Israel's control?

Either this guy is extremely naive, or he is extremely disingenuous...

Those Contras sound like the tired old Apartheid apologists who argued against the S. African boycott on the grounds that it would "hurt the Black South Africans." The Black South Africans told them what they could do with *that* argument.... And the Palestinians at Exeter clearly have been doing the same to their Contras.

I noted especially, in that last quote you used, how matter-of-factly the business reporter for the UK's Independent referred to the place where SodaStream is made as being "an illegal Israeli settlement." May that usage spread much broadly through the MSM-- especially in the US!

Probably worth pointing out to the many Mondo readers who are *not* familiar with NY-Jewish history that "settlement" in this context means something completely different from what we talk about today.... That is, those "settlements" were (as I understand it) do-gooding efforts by richer New Yorkers at the end of the 19th century to improve housing and social conditions for low-income New Yorkers (especially in the Lower East Side??)-- with many of the latter group being recent Jewish immigrants...

If you can't make it, you can watch the event by Livestream, at this link. If you don't already have an account with Livestream.com, you'll just need to set one up as you sign on. It is easy and free and takes 20 seconds.

Plus, of course, we're hoping that everyone loves the book as much as Phil Weiss and its other early readers do! You can see their fab reactions to the book, here. Tell all your friends about this wonderful new resource! And if you'd like to invite Alice to come and talk about it for your community group, congregation, or college class, give us a holler!!

1967 was 47 years ago. 1948 was 66 years ago. Not so much difference in length of time from today's POV as there was in, say, 1974, when it was more plausible to talk about "rectifying the wrongs of 1967" without even addressing 1948.

I have *always* understood Gaza to be the crucible of Palestinian nationalism. (Check my 1984 book on the PLO for details of this.) It is a crucible today in more ways than one. Very importantly, Gaza's population is around 80% refugees. It is impossible to think of Gaza's situation being "resolved" in any way that does not at least address the issues of 1948.

I want to write an article sometime titled "What we're not talking about when we're not talking about 1948"... For a huge long time there it was considered "impolite" to raise the issues of the refugees and what happened in 1948 in "polite" society in Washington DC... Even at last week's event at New America, that I blogged about here, the moderator got very flustered when Noura Erakat and Samer Badawi started talking about "ethnic cleansing" and started saying "You can't talk about that!"

Ira, the 'Times" aren't a-changing very much at all, at all. Jodi Rudoren takes her "courage" in her hands and travels to *Beit Hannoun* in the far northern end of the Gaza Strip to write about-- marathon runners. She makes no mention at all of the very numerous Gaza-Palestinian students, academics, writers, business people, and plain ol' family members whose desire to travel to and from the Strip has been completely stymied by the system of control maintained by the Israeli military over all passage of people or goods into or out of the Strip.

And she includes this mendacious and demeaning "description" of the Strip:

Hamas imposes strict religious rules on Gaza, a dense and dirty patchwork of dilapidated shacks and concrete apartment blocks, and its 1.7 million residents bear with economic isolation, daily power blackouts and occasional Israeli airstrikes.

Wow, amazing! The "economic isolation", "daily power blackouts" etc have no author. According to her, they just happened! (Or possibly, by implication reading her text, they are the result of Hamas's allegedly "strict religious rules"?) And the only Israeli military activity is "occasional Israeli airstrikes"?

This is truly misleading and inaccurate as a description of the current situation inside Gaza. (Also, had she traveled a bit further into the Strip than Beit Hannoun, she could have seen lovely market garden, orchards, occasional playgrounds, etc. ..)

Ms. Rudoren, we're coming up to the 47th anniversary of Israel's military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank (including E. Jerusalem), and the Golan. When will you get your head around the fact that this situation of generations-long military occupation is, as a whole, something that needs to be clearly identified and, by any lovers of freedom and human dignity anywhere, robustly opposed??

Great work, Alex! The work of dismantling the foundation myths of "liberal Zionism" will be long and hard; but you make a super contribution to it here.

Like many reviewers of Shavit's book, you note the conclusion he articulates re the Lydda massacre... namely that "the dirty, filthy work [of massacre and expulsion there] ... enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to live.” You're quite right to note that this denotes a truly zero-sum-game, "it's either us or them" view of the relationship toward Palestinians. But what also needs to be underlined, I think, is the sheer hyperbole (and cloying sentimentalism) of what he writes there. The doings of the Zionist colonizers did not "enable" his people, himself, or his daughter and sons to live. His "people", including his parents, he himself, and his children, have always-- since the end of the Holocaust; that is, since before 1948-- had robust and satisfying ways to live that did not involve participation in the Zionist project of colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and endless violence. Of the Jews who've lived outside historic Palestine since 1945, far fewer of them have been killed or maimed in acts of violence than the proportion of Jews who went to Palestine and participated in the Zionist project there. Jewish life in the Diaspora is rich and satisfying. If Shavit's parents had not gone to (been in?) Palestine in 1948, he could have grown up and lived a very satisfying life as a Jew almost anywhere else, and undertaken religious pilgrimages to Jewish holy sites in Palestine as and when he pleased... Ditto, his children.

This 'counting' of Jews-vs-Palestinians who live in the area of Mandate Palestine is at one level a complete diversion and at another directly misleading. The government of Israel has controlled this whole territory for nearly 44 years, including crucially it has controlled who can enter or reside in not just 1948 Israel but also the OPTs. It has used this power to actively exclude not just all Palestinians who were outside this area as of June 5, 1967 but also HUGE numbers of Palestinians who were in it as of 1967 but later left "temporarily" for job or educational opportunities elsewhere-- primarily in the Gulf-- that were completely DENIED to them inside the OPTs. Tight Israeli regs have excluded HUGE numbers of Palestinians who were resident there before 1967 (and their descendants), along with all the Palestinian refugees from e.g. East Bank Jordan who prior to 1967 could at least visit or perhaps even move to some spot in historic Palestine.... Bottom line, this obsessive 'counting' of the ethnicity of the people west of the Jordan River completely ignores not only the rights/existence of the large majority of Palestinians currently forced to live outside their homeland but also the fact that the "administrative" ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the OPTs continues to this day. These facts need to be highlighted whenever anyone gets into the "counting the people west of the river" game...

Phil, I really do think it's a problem when you write about John M: "I found his article most moving on the human costs of the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"... and then proceed to quote only what John writes about the costs to Americans. Right, I know that Americans (of whom I am one) are humans... but we are by no means ALL of humanity! In fact, we are < 5% of humanity! And the human costs of the United States' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Iraqis and Afghanis have been many, many times higher, per-capita and even just in raw numbers, than the human costs to Americans. Pus, the US invasions of their countries has effectively destroyed most of whatever physical and social infrastructure they both had prior to the invasions. So please don't ever represent the "human" costs of wars as applying only to Americans.... Bad enough, the effects those wars/invasions had on U.S. families. But 1,000 times worse, the effects they had on our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hey, Phil! Nice piece. But please don't forget the freedom to travel to and from GAZA.... and indeed, freedom to travel between the West Bank and Gaza, and even around and within the West Bank itself (which also includes occupied east Jerusalem.)

By the way, people who want to see the archived video of the hour-long Hangout we held last week with five young writers from Gaza, can do so here.

It's very unclear what Yonah means to convey with the "Dennis the Menace" reference. Maybe, a little boy who creates trouble for all around him? (Oh, trying to demean him by comparing him to a child, there, are we Yonah?)

Otoh, if we expand the analogy to think of the boy who was brave enough to call out in public that "The [Zionist] Emperor Has No Clothes!", then I think Max and all of his friends should totally embrace it! Yes, I am that kind of a "child", too!

I mean, I knew the guy was physically large but this breaks all records in Israel's longstanding policy of implanting necro-colonial settlements inside Palestine. (Anyone seen the Mount of Olives recently?)

Someone could do a real service by writing a roundup of WORLD media coverage of Sharon's death-- including, of course, reactions from some of the survivors of his many massacres. Of course it is interesting and instructive to see (once again) the cravenly pro-Zionist hypocrisy of much of the US MSM. But this is not new. I think that what discerning US citizens need to see more than anything is the huge *contrast *between the pro-Zionist pap that their (our) own dominant media feeds us with and the way the other 95% of humanity thinks about these issues...

The latest Inbar/Shamir paper is particularly timely given the fast-approaching (Dec 27th) fifth anniversary of the start of Operation Cast Lead (one of its four 'case studies'), and provides helpful background as we all ponder the 'meaning' of that terrible, 23-day-long Israel assault on the people and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip.

Annie: Huge thanks for this! As Refaat says in the book's Acknowledgments page, your contribution to the project was enormous!!

By the way, everyone should know that the excerpt Annie used above was used by permission. Anyone else seeking to use substantial xcerpts from the book should get prior written permission from JWB, as the managers of the copyright for the work.

Dr. Hatim and other friends-- one thing we're planning with some good friends, for January 16th, is a worldwide Google Hangout that will involve Refaat Alareer, some of the writers who are currently outside and (power situation permitting) inside the Gaza Strip, and people who want to join a discussion about the book from around the world! Stay tuned for more details about this!

One thing we're currently trying to figure is: What is the best time of day for this? Should we optimize it for participants in the Middle East, the USA east coast, USA west coast, or East Asia (where Refaat currently is)? Any input on this would be much welcomed.

Another thing we're thinking is it would be great for people to have little "Google Hangout Parties" in their homes, in cafes, or in other meeting spots, so they can participate as a group in this great discussion, rather than everyone just looking into her/his own computer... As I said, stay tuned, especially via the Just World Books Facebook page and the book's own rapidly developing website.

'National interest'... what 'national interest'?? Maurice (Hank) Greenberg was the man at the helm of AIG, the out-of-control "insurance" (actually, big-league financial gambling) outfit at the time that it almost caused the whole US and western economic system to crash back in 2008, destroying the savings of millions of lower and middle income US citizens and making hundreds of thousands of them actually homeless. The guy should have been tried for numerous financial crimes at the time... Instead of which he got a tiny slap on the wrist and is now back rebuilding another version of his previous shady financial empire. He's not totally home and free criminal prosecution-wise yet, however..

What is the basis for this apparently racist comment about the Israeli-Palestinian women walkers in Aviv Engler's commentary: "they dare to do what they cannot do within the Arab community – to take care of themselves for a change." ???

Except that the English translation on the signs of amakin filastiniyya is wrong. These are not 'Palestinian settlements'. They are 'Palestinian places.' Inded the whole area on which these signs are erected is Palestinian... Why don't they say simply, 'You are welcome in our country, Palestine'??

Plus, Odenheimer was an IDF veteran before he went to a college in the U.S. Maybe he should talk some about what he did in the Israeli Occupation Military to help build peace, mutual recognition, etc etc.

It says a lot about the ATFP that they have this patronizing, tone-deaf, and privileged young man as an intern there...

Or of course you could check out all the fab recipes in Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt's great Gaza Kitchen cookbook. It's in English. It's published here in Virginia, USA. Laila lives and is celebrating Ramadan with her family in Maryland... Phil, you don't need to go to Europe for great recipes!

Phil, I think Issandr's pieces at the Arabist and in the National were far more nuanced than the way you characterize them. He writes about how, in addition to making several bad moves of its own, the Morsi government has been the target of a sustained and often vicious campaign of delegitimization. Not that simply it "has now lost legitimacy."

Ah, right, Meron's at ICTY not the ICC. Much of my earlier critique still stands, though. In particular, my critique of the idea that allegedly 'international' tribunals (or any tribunals, in any jurisdiction) can deliver a 'pure', totally unpoliticized form of justice... Plus, my critique of all these international tribunals formed during the years of 'western' dominance of the world system which somehow, mysteriously, never have the many and continuing crimes committed by western and pro-western governments (including Israel), on their docket... There is no equality of nations or responsibilities before the bar of 'international' criminal justice; and absent far-reaching reforms in the world's governance system it is illusory to imagine that there could be.

(1) Neither the United States nor Israel is actually a 'state party' to the ICC. It is outrageous, therefore, that the Assembly of States Party appointed an Israeli-US jurist to be the president of the court. They were kowtowing, to try to win U.S. support for the court.

(2) Though the U.S. is NOT a party to the Rome Statute (and therefore, handily, its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC!), it has nonetheless tried over a course of many years now to USE the Hague court in furtherance of its own imperial policies in various parts of the world.

(3) Ted Meron himself is a fascinating figure. He was the chief legal counsel of the IDF in 1967-68 (!) But in that period he actually issued an advisory ruling to the IDF, as the occupying power in the OPT's, that the implantation of Israeli settlements in the OPTs was contrary to international law... Regardless of that ruling, the fact that a previous chief legal officer of the IDF was appointed not just a judge but also president of all the judges on the ICC speaks to the extreme political/juridical bankruptcy of the ICC as a 'world' body. (The illusion of all the ICC advocates/supporters in the western liberal glitterati, that any court anywhere could be completely a-political and 'pure' is surely unrobed by that fact?)

In re Harry above, I've been arguing since Obama got re-elected that he should visit Jerusalem, as such, and indeed make TWO distinct visits there: One to a significant Israeli place in West Jerusalem and the other to Orient House in East Jerusalem. He should make clear ahead of time that he'll only go to West Jerusalem if it is understood that the visit to East Jerusalem will be conducted only under Palestinian auspices. Plus, in both places, he should speak clearly about the need for the conflict to be resolved on the basis of international law.

Are these legitimate demands to make of him? You bet! How could any decent person argue against any of them?

Certainly, if he were to do this, it could be a game-changer on the order of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. (Sadat, as I recall, also insisted on visiting occupied East Jerusalem in addition to the Knesset-- in his case, it was the Dome of the Rock, and Al-Aqsa.)

Anyway, for my whole argument on this point, check out the archived video of the Pal. Ctr's annual conference on Nov. 9.

No, it's not just Larry Page and Sergy Brin. Google has a HUGE (and imho very threatening) data center just north of Tel Aviv. That's why we should all try to reduce our Google-exposure as much as possible.

Marc, I am very upset by the casual breeziness of your reference here to the ongoing crisis between Turkey and Syria, and inside both countries (especially Syria.) This crisis has already left somewhere around 20,000 Syrians dead and many thousands more gravely wounded-- with many of these casualties caused by the hands of the "opposition", as well as those caused by the Syrian government and its allies. This crisis and the attendant foreign "interventions" have also, like the earlier west-backed "interventions" in Mozambique, Nicaragua, etc, left hundreds of thousands of residents of the targeted country displaced either within or outside their country, and have wrecked a substantial proportion of the country's basic, life-sustaining infrastructure.

Our country has major culpability in this situation, Marc. Do not evade that fact.

What do you mean, therefore, by your glib reference to Syria and Turkey as "mixing it up"? Marc, there is a possibility of deeper, considerably escalated warfare between these two countries, and your language there is too glib by far.

Also, when you say, "No question that the Syrian government is collapsing"-- what is the evidentiary basis on which you build this abrupt conclusion? People in the west have been "predicting" the imminent collapse of the current Syrian government for >18 months now. Syria is NOT, as you claim, "already the next Libya." Luckily, in Syria's case, major portions of the power elites in the NATO powers (including Turkey) have already realized that the idea of using military means-- in addition to the extremely long-drawn-out and actually very damaging imposition of sanctions by the US and its allies-- may be counter-productive for them. So we in the 'west' still have a good chance to avert NATO military action.

Words are powerful tools, Marc. I hope that in the case of a deeply tragic situation like the current one in Syria you might try to deploy yours in a way that is a lot more considered and more compassionate than the way you do here?

Um, Phil, you know how much I admire the vast majority of your work. But the last portion of your PS here doesn't make any sense: "I supported [the US "intervention", = acts of war, in Libya]; and don't regret that support; and sense that there's pro-American feeling in Libya on that basis."

You "sense" that there's pro-American feeling in Libya? Since when was that a scientific method? Also, you "sense" this on the basis that you supported the US war there last year? One of your weakest sets of arguments ever, I'm afraid...

No, this is ways than Golda. She claimed that the Palestinians somehow 'forced' the Israeli soldiers to shoot them. (It was never specified how this force was exerted... ) Now, this guy claims that the Palestinians strongly 'desire' to be shot, and the Israeli soldier gives in to their desire-- and this is an example of her 'compassion'.

Lying disinfo and BS. I can't imagine why Remnick published it. His decision to do should be strongly criticized!

Ned, Miko grew up in W. Jerusalem, which was (and remains) THE most thoroughly ethnically cleansed of all the urban areas that came under Israeli rule in 1948. Jewish Israelis from Haifa or the Galilee would have had more contacts with the remnants of the Palestinian population in Israel-- though as in the old US South, this would have been mainly in service or other subservient capacities...

I think it's great that this movement is arising and active in NYC, and that Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans are part of it. In earlier times, Arab-Americans were generally glad to come under the US racial classification of "White" or "Caucasian" (whatever "Caucasian" actually means???) But for the younger generation, it seems fairly clear that the "White" world is going to treat them like people of color... so getting into coalition with all the country's other peoples of color (and "White" allies) seems like a very smart thing to do.

I am also fascinated with this concept of "Desi", which is a cultural identification used by people from both India and Pakistan, that celebrates the many, many threads of their common culture regardless of religious or "national" differences. I wish there were some similar unifying cultural concept that Arabs and Jews in the Middle East could draw on and use. For mizrachi Jews, there certainly is (as shown in the work of Ella Shohat, etc). But for Indians and Pakistanis-- especially perhaps those living in the west-- the concept of Desi culture is extremely powerful, and unifying. And it defies all that divide-and-rule that the Brits used so skillfully in "British" India, for so long.

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